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Since its beginning in 2021, Stitchwheel LLC (Stitchwheel), a needlepoint canvas painting service, had seen immediate success. From the company’s inception, the co-founder of Stitchwheel had been assessing the advantages and disadvantages of an expansion strategy and wondered what barriers she might encounter. She was also assessing the viability to expand beyond painted needlepoint canvases to achieve substantial growth. Within a short time frame, the company had enjoyed strong brand recognition and offered a meaningful unique selling proposition, but there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including which growth strategy would be most suitable. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor and support growth? What marketing and operational issues was the company likely to encounter with expansion?

Established in 2020, Nurture.farm was a digital platform that focused on reimagining the next generation of sustainable technology-based solutions for agriculture. In June 2021, Nurture.farm’s chief executive officer Dhruv Sawhney and his team recognized a grave problem in northern India. Environmental hazards were being created from mass rice stubble burning, which was an inexpensive and quick way for farmers to clear their field for the next crop cycle. In response, Sawhney and his team conceptualized and executed India’s largest crop residue management (CRM) program. The organization’s initial success in providing its services to over 25,000 farmers and curbing the stubble burning problem gained international recognition and helped Nurture.farm earn several new partnerships within a year of operations.<br><br>By March 2023, Nurture.farm was hoping to scale up its CRM program and expand into over 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of land, primarily in India’s rice paddy fields. In this mission, Sawhney and his team found themselves facing some difficult questions. Could they efficiently scale this mission-driven campaign to additional states? How could they convince and garner organic trust from farmers? Modern technologies helped Nurture.farm facilitate its operations, but what challenges could the company face in the future? What sustainable practices could help the company drive its CRM program?

In July 2019, 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio posted a dance video on the relatively new social media platform TikTok and became a TikTok sensation, soon becoming the first person to reach 50 million followers on the app and earning her a spot in the Guinness World Records. TikTok’s meteoric rise, however, was at risk of being short-lived. In 2020, the US government was concerned about the app’s rapid expansion and threatened to ban it in the United States. Even if the ban announced by the US government failed to materialize, the D’Amelios and numerous other up-and-coming celebrity TikTokers had to contend with many other issues that threatened to compromise their growing social media influencer business. There was growing public concern about TikTok’s lack of content moderation policy, which resulted in the routine posting of questionable content on the platform. The company was also slow in developing a monetization scheme to incentivize, remunerate, and retain its most influential creators. How could the D’Amelios best “future-proof” their fast-growing but fickle business against potential risk?

The disruptive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) has been on the minds of many professionals since the public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. AI is seen as a potential disruptor in areas such as law, science, education, and training—and of decision making at the middle to upper levels of organizations. This article explores how AI (in this case, ChatGPT) might affect the challenges faced by strategists in leading management teams through a key part of strategic planning exercises: scenario planning. Scenario planning is an essential part of any strategic planning exercise. After all, most strategic plans aim to give a roadmap for success in three to five years’ time. As a “case study,” the author used ChatGPT to help him move quickly through the scenario-planning process in order to explore how environmental issues affecting the Canadian mining industry might change in the near future. He started by asking ChatGPT to identify the 20 forces that would shape the environmental issues of the mining industry in Canada in the next three to five years. From this experience, the author learned various lessons. First, ChatGPT can contribute enhanced data and new ideas and can serve as a powerful reality check and challenge to groupthink. Second, ChatGPT can allow us to do things previously unthinkable, but it can also become “the centre of gravity” as opposed to simply a powerful tool used for specific activities. Finally, the value of having teams work together to generate scenarios in messy, sometimes tense conversations cannot be overstated.

In June 2021, the head of the information technology department at Ka Shui Group, a Hong Kong–based original equipment and original brand manufacturing company, was asked by the group’s chief executive officer to evaluate whether Ka Shui Group should discontinue the Industry 4.0 program it had been using as road map for digital transformation. Ka Shui Group had launched the program in 2016 with the goal of creating a cyber-physical, connected workplace featuring digitized data transparency and connectivity, smart manufacturing and research and development, and self-monitoring and error-correction capabilities. However, the i4.0 initiative had yet to progress beyond this first stage over the last three years. The program’s cascading progress within Ka Shui Group was stagnant, and results were meagre. At the same time, stakeholders were getting restless. All these problems, along with lukewarm reactions from employees and questions from investors about the benefits of Industry 4.0, were forcing Ka Shui to consider whether it was necessary to discontinue the program and, if so, what direction it should take next.

This note can be used in any case class. A strong analysis should be followed by a solid action plan. Unfortunately, a lot of action plans are not worthy of the solution they are meant to support because they are vague and open-ended. A beautiful action plan is specific and clear, with lots of detail. This note offers careful instruction on how to build a beautiful action plan. For instance, action plan builders should ensure the action plan flows from the analysis; be specific, especially in the early stages; make steps realistic; plan on overcoming natural resistance to change; state and justify assumptions; address the short and long term; define critical steps; and outline ways to measure progress. Examples of good and poor plans are included.

PowerPoint Presentation for Ivey product W26414.

In May 2022, Sri Lanka faced its worst economic crisis since its 1948 independence from Britain. The crisis led to skyrocketing prices, double-digit inflation, a more than 100 per cent increase in fuel prices, multi-hour power cuts, depleting foreign exchange reserves, an acute shortage of food and medicines, a dramatic collapse in incomes, mounting government deficits, devastating government policies, record debt defaults, and a downgraded currency rating. This was a dramatic shift, since Sri Lanka had once been the fastest-growing nation in the South Asian region with the second-highest per capita income in terms of purchasing power parity. It had the highest Human Capital Index among countries in South Asia. After the end of the civil war in 2009, Sri Lanka had accessed borrowings from the international market for infrastructure investments and earned the reputation of being a disciplined borrower that had never defaulted. By 2019, the World Bank had classified Sri Lanka as an upper-income country. The country’s economic crisis of 2022 resulted from politically motivated inefficiencies in government finances caused by unproductive spending. An unsustainable current account deficit, along with a large fiscal deficit, led to high and unsustainable government debt. Two black swan events—the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the 2022 intensification of the Russo-Ukrainian War—sparked the crisis. Though the International Monetary Fund (IMF), G7 countries, and India and China facilitated Sri Lanka’s bailout and prevented the country from defaulting on its loan repayments, an action plan to bring about structural changes was the only real remedy that could bring the country out of crisis and allow it to sustain itself over the longer term. This case highlights the factors that led to the crisis and the dilemmas faced by Sri Lanka’s new prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as he worked to draw up a restructuring plan and bring Sri Lanka’s economy back from crisis.

BGI Genomics (BGI), founded in China in 1999, covered the entire field of genomic sequencing applications. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, BGI’s strategic corporate social responsibility initiative, developing coronavirus nucleic acid test kits, created shared value for BGI and society; brought revenue growth to the company; and won BGI acclamation from the government, media, and public. However, as the market competition in the COVID-19 testing business intensified, Zhao Lijian, chief executive officer of BGI, had to consider the company’s next direction: Should BGI significantly increase investment in the COVID-19 testing business and shoulder greater social responsibility for fighting the pandemic? Or should it shift the focus back to its main business?

In late 2020, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (Goodyear)’s chief executive officer, Richard Kramer, told Cooper Tire & Rubber Company (Cooper)’s chief executive officer, Bradley Hughes, that Goodyear would submit an acquisition proposal by the end of the year. Goodyear had spent the last two years enduring global weakness in the automotive industry and the onset of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to Goodyear’s stock falling 70 per cent below its high of $35 in 2018. Kramer attributed the stock’s decline to an “industry downcycle,” and one analyst speculated that a merger could provide much needed cost and revenue synergies. Goodyear had used mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to achieve scale and fuel its growth in the past, and Kramer’s team needed to decide if a merger with Cooper could help them weather the downturn and emerge stronger. Kramer and his team identified several cost synergies, totalling $165 million per year. They also expected efficiency and tax synergies with a present value of at least $700 million as well as revenue synergies. Goodyear was considering using a combination of debt, stock, and cash to finance the transaction. To avoid earnings per share dilution from issuing too many shares as merger consideration, they were working with financial advisor J.P. Morgan to secure up to $2.314 billion of new debt financing. Kramer told Hughes that his team would work over the year-end holidays to provide “a revised proposal or other update” in January 2021.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany W32285.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product

In 2018, Christopher Hay, president and chief executive officer of Hayco, the top contract manufacturer to the brush industry globally, had been looking for a new location for some of its operations due to over a decade of rising labour costs in Hong Kong, China, where the company was based. The company accelerated its search in response to the US government’s announcement of tariffs against Chinese products in April 2018. Hayco was seeking a location closer to the US and European markets where labour costs were still low for an initial workforce of over one thousand employees and where there was no threat of tariffs. Hay’s focus was on Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. Hay considered questions such as, “What is the best market to which Hayco could move its operations? Should it establish a new subsidiary on its own or locate within a special economic zone?”

The case traces the story of Jodi Huettner, a mechanical engineer, and her journey to launch Helga Wear Inc. (Helga Wear), a company that developed personal protective equipment (PPE) in the form of workwear specifically designed for women. Huettner started the venture following her own struggles working in PPE designed for men. The case outlines the various challenges she encountered in bringing her product to market and illustrates how gender bias affects not only product design but also product demand. The case also follows the “idea journey” of an innovation, outlining the founder’s bootstrapped approach and her interactions with multiple stakeholders along the way. It also demonstrates the importance of considering the role of the broader ecosystem—such as industry standards—in shaping product demand.

Paul Hardy parlayed a degree in fashion and an early-career job as a personal shopper at high-end retailer Holt, Renfrew & Co., Limited (Holt Renfrew) into a successful career as a Canadian luxury-goods fashion designer. He was a survivor in the industry, adapting to various exogenous shocks, most recently COVID-19. The pandemic resulted in the cancellation of events and social gatherings at places where women typically wore his designs. In addition, Hardy’s online purchasing presence was minimal. His immediate response to the pandemic-related lockdowns was to enable online purchasing and highlight clothing that could be worn at home or on more informal and local excursions. His business success had been largely based on his talent and the relationships he had fostered and nurtured over the years. Hardy personally reached out to his clients and held a COVID-compliant fashion show. Once again, he was demonstrating his resilience in the face of significant challenges, but what should come next?<br><br>After the economic crisis of 2008, Hardy had expanded his business to interior design. Should he forego high-end fashion to focus on interiors? Was there a way to further pivot his fashion design given the changes in consumer demand? How would the world come out of the pandemic, and how could Hardy position himself to thrive? Would any change threaten relations with his loyal clientele? Given that his business was almost 20 years old, what should his short- and longer-term strategic plan entail?

Tea Leaf Trust (TLT), a non-profit vocational training centre, worked to develop young students into emotionally resilient change agents within their Sri Lankan communities. TLT was proud that it equipped its students with the tools necessary to transform their surroundings in positive ways by dealing with the social issues they faced. Now, fourteen years since the company’s founding, Yadharshi Selvaraj, TLT’s co-lead, was assessing the advantages and disadvantages of the current fundraising model used at TLT and wondered what solutions she should outline moving forward. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor fundraising and support continued growth?

Mike Cassidy owned Maritime Bus, which provided an essential service built on efficient and effective travel and terminal-to-terminal package delivery in the Maritime provinces of Prince Edward Island (PEI), New Brunswick (NB), and Nova Scotia (NS). Headquartered in Charlottetown, PEI, the Maritime Bus company was part of the Cassidy Group, which employed over 500 people, including Cassidy’s wife and three sons, and served over 80 per cent of the busing needs of the region. The company had experienced historic profits in 2018 and finally broke even in 2019; 2020 was supposed to be its first profitable year. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought instability to the industry, and ridership shrunk to nearly zero. By December 31, 2020, Cassidy had covered over $2.2 million in business losses with personal retirement savings. Despite the large personal financial cost, he was determined not to let COVID-19 destroy his company’s legacy. Canadian intercity busing was historically regional, and many prominent companies had failed without federal or provincial government bailouts. Facing surmounting financial pressures and lacking ridership as the company entered the 2021 season, Cassidy had to plan for the venture’s survival.

In July 2022, upon his return from vacation, Lamar Gilbert, the head of the French subsidiary of successful Swedish unicorn Virtual AB (Virtual), found himself abruptly grappling with an unsettling reality. Leo Svennson, his closest direct report, had been accused of sexually harassing two female colleagues. As he pursued an investigation into the allegations, Gilbert also realized Svennson had blatantly disparaged his authority behind his back. The French unit was in disarray and Svennson’s conduct was not the only cause. Despite Gilbert’s flattering track record, his influence had waned. In addition to removing Svennson, it was urgent for him to demonstrate more effective leadership behaviours and new influence tactics to put the French subsidiary back on track, before it was too late.

In 2015, Hubang chili sauce was launched in China’s highly competitive emerging condiment and sauce market. Instead of undertaking direct competition and a costly price war in traditional retail channels already dominated by a market leader, Wenjin Lu, a local entrepreneur and the chief executive officer of Hubang, developed a unique strategy to achieve breakthroughs via online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery platforms, whose consumers were made up of a fast-increasing consumer base of Internet and mobile users. By 2020, Hubang had achieved an annual sales milestone of US$29 million and secured series A financing. Lu faced a new dilemma: Should Hubang keep strengthening its unique O2O channel through market penetration and product expansion, or should it reposition to enter the retail market with its existing products?

The YouTube channel Digital Vidya Kendra (DVK) was launched by J. Singh in 2011 with a mission to develop future managers and researchers. However, the company soon encountered hurdles in its goal to fulfill its mission. DVK maintained a high level of quality in the content of its videos, but increasing the number of subscribers proved difficult. By November 2019, DVK had registered only 500 subscribers—half the minimum number needed to start earning money on YouTube. Its unique videos helped it to gain viewership from scholars, researchers, and academics. However, despite a potential for rapid global growth, DVK’s growth rate started dropping in 2020. Something needed to be done to save the company; therefore, Singh tasked his digital marketing team to conduct surveys and research, using 67 of the company’s videos, to investigate the issues and problems that had arisen. The DVK research team had to determine what information the numbers were revealing, what factors were affecting DVK’s performance, what demographics were affecting business performance, and how cost effective Google Ads were in terms of user traffic, revenue, and hours watched.